Ed Fries

Here's a new build with the your logo. (oops, I meant to post this last night and forgot to hit "add reply") Rally 131213.bin

Now you know why assembly programming is so hard.

Sure! That's better than mine. Can you give it to me in a dasm compatible format? (.byte statements and upside down please) Thanks!

I don't mind at all. I would be honored.

Here's a quick update. It includes darker grass for Mr. Terrain, softer and varying engine noise for Mr. WildBill, and, more importantly, it has Fuel implemented. Now you have to manage your fuel. If you run out (and you will...) your car will slow to a crawl and the enemies will (hopefully...) find and kill you. Flags give you a couple units of fuel and using smoke takes away fuel. As always, any feedback is welcome. -EdF Rally 131212.bin

I love it!

My secret is out...

I think I can get everything that matters it 4K. Certainly all the features I list above. What I probably won't get is a title screen that looks like the original game. Some of the original game music. Map 4 (which is very difficult to get to in the original game). Other tradeoffs have more to do with the atari in general, for example I don't have enough ram to support more than 3 enemy cars. For me the ultimate goal is to create something fun to play that could have shipped in (say) 1978, that captures the spirit of the original game and would have been well reviewed and hopefully would have sold well at that time. Some people like to do DPC+, or use extended RAM, or bankswitching. For me, I can see that this project is possible without that stuff and can be done well in 4K and so that's what I am trying to do.

Hmm, I like that idea of changing the sound based on direction. I'll look into that. I know about the rock bug but keep them coming. Thanks, -EdF

The real game not only has the annoying engine hum but also plays an annoying little song as you drive. I guess I need to decide how much like the original I want to make it. At a minimum I can turn down the volume on the hum. I'd love to make the smoke look better but I haven't figured out a way to do it yet. I'll keep thinking about it. Thanks!

Thanks, I love feedback about colors and sprites. If anyone wants to draw me better sprites I will happily take them.

Attached is the latest build. Lots of new additions since the last version: title screen, 3 lives, score, rocks, multiple (well 2 so far...) maps, "random" flags, x2 flag, speed increases on later maps, etc. I still need to implement fuel, fuel scoring, random rocks, map 3, "charranging mode", extra life, display lives and fuel, etc... I'm completely out of ram and have to get creative every time I need to store something. I'm almost out of (4k) rom. I have room for one more map and after that things will get difficult... Enjoy and please send feedback. -EdF Rally 131209.bin

Here's a small update. A few more bug fixes, plus I use vblank to mask the left and right edges of the map for a cleaner look. In some cases I use INC and DEC to turn vblank on and off. The only reason this works is because the low nibble of CXM1P always seems to be 1. I have no idea if this is guaranteed to be true on every model of the 2600 but it works fine in Stella and on my six switch with a harmony card. Anyone know why this value is 1 and whether I can count on it being 1? Rally 131121.bin

Hi Guys, Here's the latest version. I slowed the movement down quite a bit so that it's much closer to the original game. That makes it easier to play but I upped the number of enemy cars to 3 so that's made it pretty tough again. I also tweaked the colors to look better on actual hardware, redid the enemy AI, and fixed numerous bugs including a bad bug that was causing the whole screen to flicker occasionally. Still tons of work to do but hopefully you'll see the progress in this build. As always, any feedback is appreciated. -EdF Rally 131114.bin

It's all good. I appreciate the positive comments and I've always enjoyed Random Terrain's sense of humor.

The levels take less than 256 bytes so I should be able to fit in a few more.

Portland Retro Gaming Expo got me fired up to work on something new so I put this together over the last month or so. Still lots of work to do but I've always liked Rally-X and it seemed like lots of people started working on one but no one had come close to completing it for the 2600 so here's my attempt. This is a little over 2K. The sounds are borrowed from Halo2600 right now... AI needs work. Need more enemy cars. Need score and fuel. Spends too much time in vertical blank occasionally, etc, etc... But even with one enemy car it's pretty playable right now. Can you collect all 8 flags? Shouldn't be a problem to fit the final version in 4K and stick to original hardware limitations. Please check it out and send me any feedback you have. Thanks, -EdF rally.bin

Maybe this can be the elusive 24th Atari EA Flat. At least it's distributed by EA:

Here's the video of my entry. Not as fancy as the others but mine is only 128 bytes long... http://youtu.be/WKn3IkPu6wE In 128 bytes there is almost no room for data so all the graphics and "music" are just the code itself being displayed and/or played as the case may be. I was surprised as anyone by the emergent music that came out of a few simple lines of assembly. For the programmers out there I saved space by combining overscan, vsync, and vblank into a single loop like this: ; OVERSCAN + VSYNC + VBLANK ; All in one ; assumes SP = 0 LDA #2 STA VBLANK TSX LDY #-30 BLANKLOOP STA WSYNC TYA AND #%11111100 PHP ; NOTE this will give you 4 VSYNCs, not 3 but it doesn't seem to matter TXS ; or PLA if you like INY CPY #40 BNE BLANKLOOP STX VBLANK drip.bin

Does this work with Harmony? It didn't for me (even the 4K version). Neither did other 128b and 256b tests I tried.

FujiSkunk wins the prize! (Sorry... there is no prize...). An entire 26 letter 3x4 font stored in only 28 bytes! I started by creating the font in squish2.jpg. Then I arranged the letters so that the tops and bottoms of all adjacent letters are the same so they can overlap. I squeezed a third letter in each byte by overlapping the left edge of one with the right edge of another. The arrangement that works is squish3.bmp. Once they are all overlapped it looks like the original image I posted. To get them back out you just mask out the character you need and shift it the appropriate amount. Since the arrangement is the same for all characters the code is relatively straightforward. The attached "letters.bin" is a simple example. Is it useful? Not really because you probably waste more code space dealing with the compactness of the font than you save in the storage of the font, but still it was a fun challenge to create and I'm kind of amazed that it works out as well as it does. There are probably other arrangements that work just as well. Also there is an unused 27th glyph (3x9=27) that another arrangement might make more useful. I just have garbage in the 27th slot but it would be nice to have a period or a space. Maybe someone can improve it? Until proven wrong I'm going to call this the world's smallest font! letters.bin

That would be cool, but no. I have to go to Korea for a few days. I'll be back by the weekend and will post a sample .bin or two that use the mystery 28 byte object.

Tjoppen's recent post of a 128 byte demo inspired me to try to create something really small. It's not actually very useful but I was amazed it was even possible. Before I explain it, let's see if anyone can guess what it is. Take a look at the attached bitmap. What is it?

Mine looks like this:

Everything in the picture is a bi-fold, but I also have the sleeve type for some of them. In general these have an "EA Classics" sticker on them so I assume the sleeves are from the re-release for the classic series, but there are some exceptions. For example I have a "One on One" that is new in shrink wrap sleeve type but doesn't have the classics sticker and in the picture above you can see the "Cut & Paste" has the classics sticker but is the folding variety. BTW I also have a catalog from EA that lists an educational title from Childware (like D-Bug and Word Flyer) for the Atari called "The Lost Lion". I assume this was never produced but if so I guess it would be a holy grail to find for a collector of these.